


The Chances Given

by DreamingAmethystDragons



Series: Second Chances [2]
Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: AU: Ja'far is a dryad, Backstory, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Mythological AU, builds on Ja'far's story before the first fic in this series, went for a more folklore-like tone with this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingAmethystDragons/pseuds/DreamingAmethystDragons
Summary: "Despite your brushes of bad luck, you struggled on, and look at what came as a result.“ Just how would a dryad come to live in such a manner?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fluffyfloof over on tumblr- thanks for the inspiration!

At one time, there was a tree. A tree that lived in the mighty mountains along the coast, one of a united ecosystem running many a mile under the sun.

This tree was no different than any of its fellows. It stretched its leafy hands to the sun in celebration during the summer; its bare bones shivered and whispered in the winters. 

But one day, this tree dropped a seed.

It dropped many seeds, actually. This one wasn't intuitively unique - one could even say that it possessed a streak of extraordinarily poor luck. For while many of its siblings dropped safely to the loamy soil below, the wind took a particular interest in this seed. The wind lifted the child, spinning it, tumbling it, but the wind that the flowers bow their heads to in thanks - the wind that carries rain on his passage, that stirs the muggy heat of midsummer - can also be fickle in cruel in more ways than is given to the power of the biting fangs bestowed upon the mighty North wind.

As the wind danced with the slumbering seed, it chanced too far to the mountainside, where sheer cliffs dropped away to the cannons and streambeds long before. It lingered there, looking over; in its hesitation, it lost strength, and the seed was pulled from its hold and tumbled down, far from its brothers and sisters.

Yet, the wind had not abandoned the seed entirely - nor had fortune ceased to glance its way - and it came to rest on a ledge. Many feet below its mother, it was, and many more feet above the ground below, but on safe ground of a sort that seed laid.

Now, one would think the chances of that seed sprouting would be slim. But life, my friends, is nothing if not tenacious, white-knuckled and cunning in its determination to simply be, to grow, and this seed warmed by the friendly sun took root and extended the first shaking leaves to the sky. It was not the first, or the last, of its kind to do this.

All living things have an innate grip on survival. This tree drank dew and sunshine; it spread its roots, pushing slowly but surely into an anchoring grip on unforgiving stone. A few stray grasses took hold in the sheltered crevasses; in the face of the tempest, the tree hung fast and bowed its head. 

And so it survived.

But such a life, above and below zones of great abundance, is a lonely one, and so it was that this tree yearned for companionship. The gifts of old are with trees; in their age came wisdom and in their strength, admiration, and some of them are touched with a certain ability. The ichors of this tree quickened, and its leaves quaked in concentration, and one day a small figure appeared at its base: a young child with hair of snow, constellations splattered across his cheekbones, and the most delicate leaves (like those at the farthest tips of the young sapling's boughs) adorning his temples.

The young dryad, for dryad it was, opened his eyes, and they were the verdant green of all young growing plants. He stood, one small hand clutching his host; he looked out at the expanse where only eagles flew and the wind touched small fingers to his face like the greeting of an old friend. He looked up into the night sky and saw stars forgotten to man; he looked down and saw the river shimmering so far below.

Dryads grow slowly, but nonetheless this child grew in strength. And one day when there was more strength in his hands and some of the baby fat was gone from his face, he turned and scaled the cliff with the same tenacious strength that had so blessed that seed which once fell from this height.

Those of his kind - the dryads - come from many a kind of tree, and are no so uncommon as we might think; yet, they cannot travel far from their host and do not care to mingle with the greater world. Many of the elders prefer to slumber in their hosts, waiting for times of great joy or great sadness to wander forth. When the young dryad reached the forests where his siblings and parents were, he called out in great joy. Those in the trees around him, however, took a look and shook their heads at a dryad whose tree was so set apart, so weak in comparison to their own; never had they seen a dryad with pale hair and such tattered, scraggled clothes. Dismissive, they turned their heads and the trees pulled their reaching arms away. 

The child cried out, in bewilderment and despair; he begged for a kindly face, a soft word, but received none. Finally, tiring of the child, they drove him away. I will not speak of the details, but the child did safely make his way back to his host, and clinging to it he cried long into the night. This was the last and only time he did so.

So, the young dryad stayed there, on the mountain face; he became acquainted with the fierce eagles and agile sparrows; he tasted the cold snow and fresh rainwater on his face; he sang into the night when the stars sparked into life far above him. It was a lonely life, but he was resigned, and as he grew his eyes faded from green to the grey of the fog born of the river below in the mornings when sounds are soft and the world is young, reborn once again.

And he gave himself a name, when no one else would. Ja'far. I will be so.

This dryad had resigned himself to such a life; he asked for no other fate. Lady Luck, however, turns her favor in strange ways, and one day the young dryad opened his eyes to see a figure making its way up the mountain. A human. A man, with purple hair the shade of which he'd only seen in the tiny flowers that grew on the very edge of the highest mountain ledge. He watched them climb, heard the creak of ropes and metal, saw stone give way and the figure drop –

And for reasons he did not yet understand, the dryad called upon his innate powers and caught the human in grasping roots, and was greeted by startling gold eyes as the man reached his level....

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on tumblr under the url DreamingAmethystDragons.  
> Thanks for reading!


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